Memorandum submitted by Professor Colin
Richards
SUGGESTIONS FOR
ANEW
INSPECTION MODEL
BASED ON
MY CONTRIBUTION
TO THE
CAMBRIDGE REVIEW
OF PRIMARY
EDUCATION
APPENDIX 1
A POSSIBLE MODEL OF SCHOOL INSPECTION
1. The Government needs a system which assures that
individual primary schools are providing a suitable quality of
education and which triggers action should that quality not be
evident. This requires a system of school inspection which assesses
standards and quality and retains the confidence of parents and
teachers. The current Ofsted inspection model does not provide
this. However, parents have come to expect publicly available
periodic assessments of the quality of and standards in, individual
schools. It would be political folly to abandon the notion of
regular inspection.
2. The current Ofsted model would be modified in
a number of ways to make "inspection fit for purpose"
Inspections would be lengthened (compared with the current "light-touch"
model) but not to the same extent as the earlier Ofsted inspection
models. This would probably involve lengthening the time between
inspections from three to perhaps five years. Such enhanced inspections
would focus on the classroom, not on documentation, and would
focus on (a) the performance of children in the work actually
observed by inspectors over the range of the curriculum; and
(b) the quality of teaching and of other provision based on far
more classroom observation than the current "light-touch"
inspection model allows. Inspections would also report on the
effectiveness of the school's procedures for self-evaluation and
improvement. A summary of these judgements would be reported publicly
to parents, along with a summary of the school's reactions to
the inspection judgements. A very adverse report might trigger
a full inspection or the bringing forward of the timing
of the next inspection. Inspection findings would be seen as independent
professional, though subjective, assessments of schools' strengths
and weaknesses at a specific point in time. No attempt would be
made to compare the results of successive inspections three or
five years apart.
3. Governors, parents, Local Authorities or schools
themselves would have the right to request an inspection during
the normal period between inspections and this request would be
considered by Her Majesty's Inspectorate.
4. Inspection teams would include the individual
school's improvement partner (ie its SIP or its future equivalent)
in an advisory (but not inspectorial) capacity. The SIP would
take responsibility with the head and governors of the school
for any follow-up work consequent on the inspection.
5. The system of inspections would be administered
by a reconstituted Her Majesty's Inspectorate, a stand-alone independent,
publicly funded body who would report regularly to a Parliamentary
Select Committee and whose work would be periodically reviewed
by a commission including representatives of all relevant stake-holders
and drawing on the expertise of inspectors, researchers and educationists
from other parts of the United Kingdom and abroad. School inspections
would be carried out by an enlarged body of government inspectors
(HMI) incorporating HMI currently working in Ofsted and drawing
on members of the current cadre of additional inspectors.
6. In addition to contributing to school inspection
HMI would revert to a role similar to that of pre-Ofsted days.
They would have their own "patch" of schools, would
liaise with local authorities and would also carry out their own
programme of survey inspections. In exceptional circumstances
HMI might inspect individual schools at the request of ministers.
December 2010
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